Bug#1125967: libconfig-model-dpkg-perl: cme can add "Priority: optional"

[Dominique Dumont]

On Monday, 19 January 2026 17:44:54 Central European Standard Time you wrote:
> I think I see the point of making the removal of Priority conditional
> on the Standards-Version; on the other hand:
> - AFAIR, `cme modify dpkg-control -save' has only reformatted
>   d/control and never added/removed any fields; or I don't remember
>   or I never hit such a situation;

Hmm... Right...

With libconfig-model-dpkg-perl 3.106 we had:
- Priority upstream-default = optional no matter the value with Standard-Version
- a bug which wrote the value of Priority field if it was set (by user or because it was in control file). Hence this field would not be added, and not be removed (hence the bug files by Andreas)

With 3.017:
- a bug fix to not write a value that is identical to upstream_default value
- a conditional setup where upstream_default is optional for Std-version >= 4.7.3  and default is optional for Std-version < 4.7.3

The second change is what writes back Priority/optional field with Std-version = 4.7.2.

> - I would also argue that "Priority: optional" was obsolete with dpkg
> 1.22.13 (January 2025), it just took some time until this was written down
> in policy.

If we consider that nobody will try to use cme to write packages for dpkg < 1.22.13 (i.e. for oldstable ?), we may drop the condition on Standard-Version.
Thus cme would drop Priority/optional field in any case.

However, cme cannot decide if  user wants to reformat without changing anything (dpt-fixup) or want to drop unnecessary fields (Andreas' bug). So you may have case where Priority/optional is dropped when running «cme modify dpkg-control -save».

What do you prefer ?

All the best

PS: you can use «cme run update-standards-version» instead of these lines:

if ! grep -qF "Standards-Version: 4.7.3" debian/control; then
 	cme modify dpkg-control source 'Standards-Version="4.7.3"'
 	not_is_dirty || git commit -a -m 'Declare compliance with Debian Policy 4.7.3.' || true
 fi 

you will get the same change, including the git commit